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Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 308, 27 November 1936, Page 6

A donation of £1 Is was made by the Mount Albert Biorohgli Council to help oil the work of experimenting to discover a serum immunising dogs against distemper. The introduction of a five-day week for its officers, involving the closing of the Town Hall offices ■on Saturday mornings, has been approved by the Auckland City Council. This will involve the staff working an additional half-hour, from 4.30 p.m. to 5 p.m., on other working days. The New Zealand branch of the British Bed Cross Society and Order of St. John, which came into existence m 1915, is about to transfer its remaining assets (over £100,000) to the joint council ot the Order of St. John and the New Zealand Bed Cross Society, and will then dissolve.

At a meeting of the Wanganui provincial executive of the 1* armers Union, Mr J. R. Lloyd Hammond assured members that steps were being taken to prevent sheep stealing. He stated that an endeavour was being made to have consignment notes sent with all stock travelling by road, also that the Commissioner of Police had been approached with regard to the posting of a system of patrols in the areas where complaints were prevalent. When in Barrow recently the Duke of Kent was presented with a beautiful ivory- necklace of 6o links, all hand carved by a local craftsman, as a present tor the Duchess. Later the same craftsman will forward a casket to hold the necklace, made from old oak from TJrswick Church, ivory from one of Buskin’s chessmen, boxwood from one of Buskin’s printing blocks, walnut from a tree on Wordsworth’s grave, and oak from the old Brig of Ayr.

When discussing the Auckland Acclimatisation Society’s liberality in liberating pheasants in the King Country early in the year, and the increase in the number ot birds in the Taumarunui district, Mr A. E. Benn, ot Lairdvale, said that his son accidentally ploughed up a nest containing id pheasants’ eggs recently. Although startled by the horses, the bird went only a short distance, for, when Mr Benn returned a little later, he noticed that the pheasant had made an attempt to collect the eggs and remake the nest. Mr Benn, however, remade the nest, and about two weeks later saw the bird with 11 young chicks, two eggs left in the nest being infertile.

A Palmerston North resident who lias just returned from a visit to Australia,- commenting on the shortage of oranges in New Zealand, stated to-day that in Melbourne and Sydney, and even in Newcastle, the largest South Australian oranges were being sold in the shops and from barrows on the street at the rate of 14 for a shilling: smaller oranges (locally grown) were sold everywhere for to 6d per dozen Ho had purchased a kerosene tin full to the brim of oranges (93) for Is 6d Grapefruit were sold at Is to Is 6d a dozen, according to size. Cherries were very plentiful over there at present, the price varying from 5d to 6d per pound. Bananas, which were grown in Queensland, were selling at 18 for 6d. Pineapples were sold according to size. These prices, he added, contrasted sharply with those charged in New Zealand.

Plans are being discussed for a visit to New Zealand in 1938 of a team of negro debaters from Le Moyne College, Memphis, Tennessee. When the spindle broke in ta hydrant in the middle of Cable Street, Wellington, at 6 o’clock last night, a column of water shot to a height almost level with the tops of nearby buildings. An announcement that all speed restrictions under the Auckland City Council by-laws had been disallowed and that the general 30 m.p.h. limit would obtain throughout the city forthwith was made in the Gazette last night. While his motor car was parked in a Timaru street a few nights ago, a commercial traveller lost three cases of whisky and a quantity of cigarettes valued at about £4O. When he returned to his car lie found that the back of the vehicle had been forced open and the contents removed.

A new Ministerial residence is to be erected on a portion of the State’s property in Tinakori Road, opposite Hill Street, Wellington. The projected house will be occupied by the Minister of Lands (Hon. IT. Langstone). The existing residence will be used as a temporary dental clinic. In recognition, in the words of the president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York (Ur. F. P. Keppel) of thp extraordinarily satisfactory development of its library, the Victoria University College, Wellington, is to receive from the corporation a grant of 10,000 dollars, payable at the rate of 5000 dollars annually for two years for its library. An amusing story, which (says an exchange) incidentally is true, is going the rounds in Wellington. A young couple wishing to go to a holiday resort for a week at Christmas wrote to the proprietor of a seaside boardinghouse asking him to “please pencil room” for term required. Back came the answer, quoting terms, and with it a pencilled sketch of the room, showing location of bed, window, dressingtable, door, etc. “You have in the North Island of New Zealand one of the most interesting and instructive volcanic regions in the world, and a field of unrivalled opportunity for volcanologists,” said Professor Howel Williams, of the University of California, in an address last night in Wellington. Tarawera was a volcanic plug and the eruption of 1886 had been caused by the opening of a crevasse or crack across its dome, he explained.

New Zealanders who have seen photographs of Mr J. E: Lovelock finishing races at leading overseas meetings have noted a peculiar fact—that he is seldom without a smile as he approaches the tape, whether winning or losing. Mr Lovelock gave an explanation of this in Christchurch. He said it was probably not just nervous tension. When he was winning he smiled because of the pleasure of it, and when he was beaten he smiled because losing struck him as being rather funnv.

In a wireless message received last evening from the Matua it was mentioned that on Sunday last on one of the small islands of the Tongan Group, two miles south of Honga Tonga, a volcano in eruption was witnessed. The locality of Honga Tonga has frequently been the scene of submarine eruptions On July 1, 1923, a severe eruption there was witnessed by Captain A. H. Davey arid the officers of the Tofua, and on April 29, 1912, a series of submarine disturbances was witnessed in that locality by the late Captain R. Crawford and the officers of the Tofua. v

A sequel to the burglary committed at the home of Mrs C. McKay, of Mastcrton, on May 23 last, when jewellery belonging to Lady Hart, wife of Brigadier-General Sir Herbert Hart, was stolen, was heard in the Masterton Magistrate’s Court yesterday when Ernest Clarence Williams, •aged 22, was charged with receiving jewellery from a person or persons unknown, knowing it to have been dishonestly obtained. He pleaded not guilty and was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, and for converting a motor car, an offence which was admitted, he was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment, the terms to be served concurrently. That the age of trees may be ascertained by the number of rings in the trunk, and the age of animals by the number, and condition of their teeth, is common knowledge. The age of fish, however, is determined by the scales. This fact the members of the Waimarino Acclimatisation Society learned when it was decided to compare the ages of the trout in the Manganui-a-te-Ao stream and the Mangawhero, so that the difference in size of the fish in the two streams might be ascertained. The scales of fish of a similar size will be taken from the streams and sent to the scientific branch of the Department of Marine.